Dear Internet Gods of Technology, Forgive me for I have sinned.
Now that I’ve said my repentance, allow me to explain how I got my account unbanned from Hacker News.
Tech Sanctuary
For those who don’t know, Hacker News (HN) is the Mecca of sharing all things nerd, tech, and science. Thousands of users go here daily to share the latest and greatest from the world of technology, computer engineering, and startups. Continue Reading

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The sad thing about HN is that they don't do a good job of helping members understand the guidelines when they violate them. They just silently penalize them for it, and as a result the behavior continues until they are banned.

It's like silently watching while your dog chews sock after sock for weeks right in front of you, and then one day kicking him in the stomach while you're out on a walk. Not very helpful or effective at producing the behavior you want.

If they want to help promote good interaction, they need to reinforce that through communication. Could be something as simple as, "Hey, we saw you did X and we'd prefer you did Y here." Then at least people know what the heck is going on.

There's a pretty narrow slice of people on HN who are making bad posts, but are conscientious enough to know they're doing something wrong and respond to criticism (which is freely offered if the user looks salvageable.)

I think it's greatly to HN's benefit that Paul Graham doesn't have traffic goals and is so concerned with preventing decline. Making it difficult for poor users to learn to become mediocre users is a bit part of that because too many mediocre users are enough to drive away the best users and dilute the value of the discussions (downvotes no longer being reliable enough since mediocre users upvote mediocre posts.)

Please understand I'm not calling Andrew mediocre, although I do think he should share more of his experiences in comments. :)

I would disagree that feedback is provided to users. In fact the opposite is true, people flag/downvote with no explanation to users.

I wasn't just a mediocre user, I was downright bad. I wasn't using the system properly, but I didn't understand that I was in the wrong. I believe it is intentional that HN uses have to learn how to use the platform or be told by other technical people; it helps to maintain a certain type of thinker.

However, if I were designing a community platform, I'd make it overly obvious how to use it and be a productive member.